Congress MP Shashi Tharoor Gets Protection From Arrest
NEW DELHI : Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has been granted protection from arrest in the case of his wife Sunanda Pushkar’s death, for which he has been summoned to court on Friday. The court had last month said there were “sufficient grounds” to proceed against him on charges of cruelty and abetting suicide.
While granting him anticipatory bail, the court said Mr Tharoor can’t fly abroad without its permission and has to submit Rs. 1 lakh as surety.The Patiala House Court also said that the Thiruvananthapuram MP cannot travel abroad without prior permission of the court and cannot tamper with the evidence and witness.Tharoor will also have to furnish a bail bond of Rs 1 lakh.
In his appeal for protection, the politician said the charge-sheet was filed without any arrest. “The law is very clear that if the charge-sheet is filed without arrest, bail is inevitable,” said Mr Tharoor’s lawyer.
Reacting to the development, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy told news agency ANI, “There is nothing for Shashi Tharoor to celebrate. He is not in Tihar jail, he can sit with Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, they are also bail-wallas”.
Special Judge Arvind Kumar on Wednesday reserved the judgment after the Delhi Police opposed Tharoor’s anticipatory bail plea, saying he might flee the country.The Congress leader had moved the court on Tuesday, seeking anticipatory bail.
In his plea, Tharoor had submitted that the charge sheet in the case was filed and the Special Investigation Team (SIT) had categorically stated that the probe was concluded and that his custodial interrogation was not required.
The court had summoned the Congress leader as an accused in the case on June 5, asking him to appear before it on July 7 and observing that there were sufficient grounds to proceed against him.
Sunanda Pushkar, 51, was found dead in her suite at a five-star hotel in Delhi on January 17, 2014, two days after accusing her husband on social media of having an affair with a Pakistani journalist. Tharoor has been charged under sections 498A (husband or his relative subjecting a woman to cruelty) and 306 (abetment of suicide) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), but has not been arrested in the case.
In the nearly 3,000-page charge sheet, the police had named Tharoor as the only accused, while also alleging that he had subjected his wife to cruelty. Mr Tharoor, say investigators, “ignored her calls and disconnected her calls in the days before her death.” Sunanda Pushkar used social media to reach him, but those messages were also ignored, says the charge-sheet.
In one of her emails to Mr Tharoor, said the police, she had written that she had “no desire to live…all I pray for is death.”Her last mails and messages on social media have been taken by the police as her dying declaration.(With Agency Inputs).
